My conversation with Mike Volpi
@mavolpi, who is one of the strongest early stage investors of the last decade backing companies like Scale, ClickHouse, Confluent, Wealthfront, and many others.
When I started investing a couple years ago, Mike was one of the first people I reached out to for advice. Since then he's started his own new firm, Hanabi.
We talked about creating a new VC firm, how AI impacts venture capital, and a bunch of his ideas around specific trends in AI and elsewhere. I love this conversation, hope you enjoy.
Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(0:39) Building a venture firm from scratch
(4:02) Designing Hanabi
(5:52) Why stage matters less
(9:38) Building a venture brand
(13:58) The role of board seats
(17:06) Attributes of enduring firms
(20:44) The future of AI labs
(23:14) Open-source and neolabs
(32:49) The compute race
(36:51) The future of software
(45:49) Investing in defense
(47:50) From operator to investor
(50:35) Thriving founders today